Featuring talents including Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift and Chris Rock, it’s an amazing ensemble. Some have worked with the director before on films such as American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, Joy, The Fighter and Three Kings.
So far, so good. But the majority of news stories surrounding Russell’s first release in seven years suggest he’s a piece of shit. When I say news stories, I mean blogs and extended social media posts. But there are a lot of them, and many have swear words in their titles.
The main reason for the vitriol is that Russell has been on the verge of being canceled for a number of years, and there’s a groundswell of opinion on the internet insisting it’s time the agenda was pushed harder.
In 2011, Russell’s transgender niece, then 19, filed a complaint in Florida, claiming the Hollywood hotshot had sexually assaulted her. According to a police report, the moviemaker admitted he’d touched her breasts after claiming she’d allowed him to do so while they were doing ab exercises at the gym. He supposedly did so out of curiosity about her enhanced figure. The case was closed without any charges being brought against Russell.
Such a move was foolish to say the very least, especially for a director known for his genius/madness approach to filmmaking and his volatile emotions. He has clashed on set with Lily Tomlin and George Clooney among others. He’s also infamous for allegedly putting fellow director Christopher Nolan in a headlock at a Hollywood party.
Meanwhile, Russell has continued his work raising money and awareness for mental health advocacy, a cause close to his heart. He beautifully expressed his sentiments toward those dealing with mental illness struggles in Silver Linings Playbook, which is about a bipolar man returning to his family after spending time in a mental institution.
But seven years without making a movie, after creating four outstanding features in five years between 2010 and 2015, suggests a deeper behind-the-scenes story.
However, Amsterdam — a murder-mystery comedy set in the ’30s — is slated for release in November and has a slightly quirky Wes Anderson feel about it.
One of the news stories currently making the rounds asks a very valid question: Why are all these top actors choosing to work with Russell? And for reasons other than were intended, that’s probably a great question to examine. Bale and De Niro aren’t short of work and are great judges of character, and they’re happy to be involved. Swift and Robbie are strong women who aren’t afraid to voice their opinions, and they’re taking part. In the current environment, isn’t it telling these high-profile actors haven’t shunned Russell?
The cast is diverse, experienced, and intelligent, and many have worked with Russell before — and certainly worked with him after — the 2011 controversy. They know him well.
While disgruntled articles continue to swirl, it may be better to look at those closer to the story with no reason to defend Russell in particular — other than that they enjoy working with the creative genius.
How the film performs will be interesting, and how the mainstream media will treat it remains to be seen. I don’t know if Russell is a piece of shit, but those close to him seem to think he’s OK, so I’m looking forward to Amsterdam.
Around here, of course, we have the benefit of seeing how things turned out before we have to publish. (Digital beats the old-school ink-on-paper approach for many reasons, but this qualifies as a major one, certainly.) … As it turned out, Rolling Stoneloved the show if for no other reason than the lengthy and stellar cast list. … Overall, they seem to be in the minority, though — although in fairness criticisms seem to focus almost singularly on the director, Russell, being apparently a truly horrible human being. We don’t need to go into any of that, however, as we can simply point out that Amsterdam made in the neighborhood of $10 million globally across its weekend debut, and it cost over $80 million to make.* It could be that potential audience members care more about the director’s character than do the actors being paid to hang around with him. Go figure.
Connector Regulations: Good or Bad for Innovation?
You might be wondering: Why should governments get involved in what tech companies put on their phones?
The answer is complicated, so let’s break down why it’s ultimately a good thing for consumers. The EU’s reasoning is that Apple’s Lightning connector, which is completely proprietary, creates unnecessary waste.
It’s hard to disagree when so many people’s drawers are filled with a slew of different chargers — one for every electronic device lying around the house.
The EU’s point that Apple connectors create unnecessary waste is sound.
Remember Apple’s 30-pin cables for iPads and Samsung’s innumerable proprietary connectors? By adopting a universal connector, these sort of issues become problems of the past. With more companies switching to renewables and recyclables, it makes sense to reduce unnecessary waste.
Also note the price of plastic packaging pales in comparison to resources going into the production of each new connector. We could all potentially look forward to a future devoid of landfills replete with useless old cables.
Even if the planet’s not on your mind, you’d have to agree there’s nothing more annoying than not being able to use a decade-old device because you can’t find the right charger. With a single power connector, you wouldn’t need to hunt down an Apple charger when you’re over at your parents’ house.
No power adapter? No problem. The ubiquity of USB-C would have the added benefit of allowing your phone to get juiced up directly from any PC.
What’s more, the $20 you’d spend on a spare phone charger — or the $10 you’d use to purchase an extra Lightning cable — is money you could put toward something else.
Unlike Apple’s removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack from their phones, which set a terrible new standard for all other manufacturers to follow, most phone companies have already switched to the USB-C standard — making Apple the only holdout.
With all the positives out of the way, we must address the elephant in the room. Namely that it’s wrong for governments to tell tech companies what they can and cannot do.
Some might argue forcing Apple to get rid of its Lightning connector stifles technological innovation — but the fact remains, Lightning connectors are long overdue for a replacement.
Despite being introduced only two years before the USB-C standard, Lightning’s age is really starting to show. Two years is huge in terms of tech advancement. Lightning’s speeds are roughly 10 times slower than any connection you can get out of a USB-C.
USB-C connectors can carry signals from wires rated for 10 times the speed any Lightning cable can manage, and they’re even future-proofed for the upcoming USB-4 standard. Lightning can only carry a measly 12 watts of electricity at 2.4 amps, compared to USB-C’s native power support, which ranges from 100 watts at 3 amps to 240 watts at 5 amps.
With all that in mind, USB-C is faster, more efficient and much more ubiquitous. Plus, it’s what the industry wants.
The government is merely forcing Apple to get with the times by forcing them to get rid of Lightning — or at least forcing them to accelerate their plans to do so.
If Apple had their way, chances are they’d make yet another proprietary connector. Such standards have enabled electronics manufacturers to create higher-quality products with standardized testing, allowing them to focus on developing innovations that matter, while offering convenience to end-users like you and me.
Without getting too far into the weeds, we should point out that Apple’s entire history — indeed, its entire sense of self-identity — rests almost completely on a blindered belief that it knows what is best for everyone. It believes this regardless of what the people themselves think. If you have some time and want to read a fun biography on its founder. At some point you will read (complimented by the emotion of your choice) how Steve Jobs rather militantly concluded that no reasonable reason exists why anyone would ever need a mouse with more than one button. That may tell you all about Apple that you need to know. … Still, they make very fine and very stylish products. Really pretty, those Apple things.
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.Steve Jobs
What is your favorite part about working in this industry?
My favorite part about working in this industry is all the friends I’ve met along the way.
Throughout your career, what is your favorite scene you have created?
I don’t think I could choose a favorite scene. I’ve been fortunate to work with such talented casts and crews. I wouldn’t want to hurt any feelings. I’ve had so much fun!
Who are three performers you dream of working with?
This is also another difficult question. Three performers I dream of working with are Luna Star, Bruce Venture and Rico Shades.
What song best describes you?
I’m a fan of all genres of music as there is a time and place for almost anything. I really love OutKast. “CPU” by Big Boi goes: “It’s you that’s on my computer screen ’cause it’s you that’s on my mind.” I want to be the girl you’re watching and am looking forward to bringing you new content.
What is your favorite season?
My favorite season is summer. I don’t like being cold. Less clothing and shoes is preferred.
What foreign language would you like to learn?
I speak a little Korean and even less Spanish. I’m embarrassed that I understand more than I am comfortable speaking. I’d love to be fluent in both. After that, probably Japanese and French.
What era would Kalina Ryu choose to live in if she could?
I really appreciate the freedom and modern technological conveniences that we have. I can’t imagine traveling back in time before running water and electricity. I do love the traditional Korean folkwear of the Joseon dynasty. The hanboks are so beautiful.
If you could meet any celebrity, who would you choose?
I’d choose Mila Kunis. She’s super pretty.
If you won the lottery tomorrow, what is the first big purchase you would make?
The first major purchases I would make would be buying a bunch of houses all on the same street for my entire family somewhere tropical.
What is the funniest thing you have ever seen happen in person?
The funniest thing that has ever happened to me is having my connecting flights delayed three times today!
What is a quirk you have that no one knows about?
A quirk that I have that no one knows about? I’m pretty much an open book. Everyone knows how silly I am.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I’m not sure if it’s considered a hidden talent, but I like to paint.
Who is your favorite superhero?
Superman.
What does your perfect day off look like?
A perfect day off for me is a day at the beach with a handsome man.
On the upside, they were able to correctly count to 15, so that deserves some kudos. (We added the pictures.) We’re not sure that group of queries represents the most linear thinking or ends up painting the most rounded picture of Kalina, but you can definitely get personality from the effort. When it all comes down to it, you may be surprised at how much personality matters more than almost anything. Understanding that, you may naturally increase your knowledge of this excellent Kalina Ryu personality on ManyVids. Anything else that happens, well, that will be up to you.
Surviving on Twitch is a fraught prospect, even for the most dedicated of streamers.
Once touted as a platform for gamers to livestream their hobby and socialize with other geeks, Twitch has strayed far from its original purpose. Having diversified its reach outside of gaming, Twitch is now at a crossroads. To whom does it cater, and how can it appeal to one audience without alienating the others?
The platform’s rapid descent into smutty content comes from Amazon’s increased demands for better quarterly earnings. This much is evident with the latest development, reported by Bloomberg, that discussions are now underway within the company to dramatically change content monetization — with some of the proposed changes potentially going live in just a few short months.
One of the options being considered is a pay cut for the platform’s highest-paid partners, reducing their revenue take from subscriptions from 70 percent to 50 percent, and the introduction of various tiers of partnership with different rates and requirements — all while partners are prohibited, via exclusivity contracts, from streaming on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.
Twitch’s predisposition toward earnings at all costs means giving preferential treatment to “Twitch Thots” — women who monetize their bodies for quick bucks — at the cost of community values. As a platform designed for minors aged 13 and up, there are next to no safeguards preventing minors from viewing adult content. If anything, it has been promoted on the main landing page of the website, with many “adult audience only” streamers providing links directly to their OnlyFans pages.
The gateway of users being able to access or promote adult content is fueling the oversaturated meat market, which sees impressionable adolescents forming parasocial relationships with content creators, or young women selling their intimate content for as little as $7.50 a month, with the average OnlyFans creator earning just $145 to $180 per month.
Twitch allowing this to continue is a far cry from its beginnings as a wholesome video game-sharing platform. With the increased pressure to placate shareholders with higher quarterly earnings, Twitch has not been impartial in regard to its content moderation, shifting their attention to woke initiatives like LGBTQ inclusivity and addressing toxicity in video games — rather than facing head-on the real issues the platform faces, such as abuse and exploitation of its users and content creators.
It’s almost as if Twitch is keen on creating new problems, or addressing nonexistent ones, instead of dealing with the problems it already has.
Twitch’s issues have not gone unnoticed. With the looming revenue cuts, the platform’s top content creators are going to raise a fuss and are very likely to look to greener pastures, like YouTube, which already has strict content moderation in place to prevent sexual content from being pushed on minors.
Parents, too, are keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing, especially with revelations that minors are being groomed by online influencers for sexual gratification or transgender ideology. These are developments that will undoubtedly put a damper on Twitch’s profit margins, which have been largely driven by its inconsistent moderation standards. In the pursuit of profit, Twitch could ultimately destroy itself.
While it’s hard for an audience of mostly teenagers to deny the atavistic lure of scantily clad women who flaunt their sexuality, the platform itself need not dismantle its core audience by attempting to cater to every fan base in the naked pursuit of profit.
Twitch must decide what its core values are in order to determine what the platform will look like in a decade — assuming it isn’t supplanted by more focused alternatives in the not-too-distant future.
Just as an example, you can gauge your level of twitch with the header model here, Amouranth, or you can catch one of our personal favorite, Sasha Grey, as she conquers the world(s) and all. You should probably spend some time on both — y’know, for science. As a matter of encouragement, we even included a few potentially twitch-inducing photos of Sasha, who happens to be our July, 2007 Pet of the Month. We did that also for science, of course. Everybody love science (at least if presented properly).
Say hello to Dave Navarro, member of Jane’s Addiction, guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers, host of Ink Masters on Spike TV, and no stranger to beautiful women. Penthouse sat down with Navarro to talk about women, sex, and the source of inspiration for his set of photos, which were shot by Holly Randall.
So, Dave Navarro, what is sexy to Dave Navarro?
The answer to that question is very difficult to put into words, because what’s sexy to me at three in the morning is probably different than what’s sexy at nine a.m. And I think that’s probably true for a lot of people.
When I wrote that question I thought, This is a stupid fucking question.
Well, it makes sense that you would ask that question, but I think the answer is, so many things can be sexy. That’s why I chose these two models. Because they’re very, very different, you know? Even the style of modeling that they do is very polarized. [Editor’s note: Skin Diamond is an adult performer, and now a Penthouse Pet; Mosh is an alternative/fetish model.] And I think that kind of speaks to my sensibilities.
Let’s approach it from a different direction: Talk about some of the decisions you made for this shoot.
The decisions I made were, in my mind, more in terms of “sexy” than “hot,” because those are different things. To me, sexiness is mystique and mystery, a yearning to want to know someone, whereas straight-up “pornographic” imagery falls more into the “hot” category, and is just more lustful. I think what I was trying to accomplish here was to show these women in a way that appeared strong and interesting and mysterious, because ultimately that’s what I find sexy in women and people.
So they’re “sexy” and not “hot” per se?
I mean, they’re hot women to begin with, so that can’t help but be a component. But to put them in a darker environment, and stay away from pornographic setups, and play with shadows and light a little bit more, and create an atmosphere that really has a mood — that was a little bit more along the lines of what I wanted to accomplish. Skin Diamond is a very well-known adult-film star, and I feel that we’ve seen her in adult scenarios and setups plenty, but Mosh isn’t. From what I’ve seen of her work, it’s more fetish-oriented and burlesque. I was told I could pick anybody I wanted to, and those were the two I selected.
There’s a lot to be said about the choices you made and didn’t make. I think the ebony-and-ivory theme is interesting. Is there some sort of story there?
Believe it or not, the black-and-white issue wasn’t even intentional. We thought about it afterward. I was told that I could find the two prettiest girls I could think of: Skin is a good friend of mine, and she’s just got such a life energy and spirit to her — in addition to being gorgeous.
It comes across in the photos.
Yeah, she’s just a superfun girl in real life. So I knew I could count on her to bring that. But I’d never met Mosh. I just took a chance that we might work together, and I knew that I could count on Mosh to look stunning. I knew they would both look stunning. But I didn’t want to do a typical pornographic shoot; I wanted to do something that had a little more of a Kubrick feel to it. Whether we achieved that, I don’t know, but what I mean by that is, I wanted to set up a scenario, an environment, that was oddly timeless and had a distinct mood to it.
Had you been to that location before?
I had never been there. I selected it out of a couple of different choices. One of the options was a more goth, dark, castle kind of environment, which spoke to me on a lot of levels, but I just felt that it was a little too obvious.
A little too in-the-box? Because that’s what you’d expect Dave Navarro to do?
I think so, yeah. I mean, in my own house it’s one thing, but I’m not trying to portray me in these pictures. I just felt it would be fun to experiment with something a little out of the ordinary. And to be perfectly frank, in my own life I don’t watch pornography, and I don’t look at pornographic material.
Based on what I know about you, I’d imagine you don’t really need to.
Well, yeah, I understand that, but for me I’ve always felt that it’s oddly synonymous with being hungry and only looking at a menu and not being able to order anything off it.
A friend once said that looking at a solo girl in a porn mag is like looking at a skate park with no one skating it.
Yeah, same thinking. If I’m hungry, I’d rather eat. I don’t want to watch a film of people eating, you know what I mean?
When you’re horny, you want to fuck.
Yeah, I suppose. I think these two girls come across as gorgeous and seductive, but they also look like people who I’d want to hang out with. And that’s something that I thought was pretty important. The truth is that a pretty girl can get you interested, but an interesting girl can keep you interested. Do you know what I mean? And I felt like I wanted to show these women that way.
Obviously these artists all ended up with photographs for the magazine, and equally obviously, a great many of those photgraphs involved some level of nudity. Consdering that display of such art goes against the standards set by Penthouse for the free portions of the web (that we control), we have done a bit of culling, combined with a bit of selective cropping, so that you might at least get a feel for the feeling of the artist on tap for the occasion.
It’s strange that someone who doesn’t look at porn directed a porn movie and now a porn shoot.
Right, but I also don’t listen to a lot of rock bands even though I’m in a rock band. And I don’t watch reality TV, but I’m on a reality-TV show. I think that being behind the camera on this Penthouse shoot was what was intriguing in terms of directing the film. I’m a closet filmmaker and have been for many, many years, and the fact that I was given a budget and a crew and a selection of stars to work with, I was like, Yeah, that sounds like a fun thing to do.
When I first heard about this, I started thinking of all kinds of people who would be interesting to direct a shoot — like, John Waters came to mind. I’m just wondering, aside from the gothic angle, were there any other concepts you had?
Waters would be a great one. But he’s someone who’s in the visual arts. Whereas I think it’s interesting to watch what someone who’s not in visual arts would do — a writer, or someone who has to create imagery through other means. I think a band tries to create imagery with music. Or a writer creates imagery with words, and so forth. I can almost imagine what John Waters would do. And I did have the instinct to do something gothic and dark, I had the instinct to use a lot of tattooed alt models, I had a big instinct to do something weird, something funny. But ultimately the conclusion I came to was that that would be making this more about me than about the models. And that’s not what I wanted to do.
Interesting. Because the way I read the project was that this was about Dave Navarro and what he thinks is sexy.
Yeah. But I’ve spent so much of my life doing things that ask for attention, and I didn’t want to spoil this opportunity with a bunch of randomness to create some kind of psychological insight into the workings of my mind. That’s not what this was about.
I hear you. You have plenty of outlets in which to express yourself.
Exactly my point. I do a radio show, I do a television show, I’m in a rock band.
The Dave Navarro show is center stage.
Yeah, like, enough already. And in this case, I didn’t want to do something that would, I don’t know, disrespect these girls. The initial vision was to do something beautiful and something that, if I saw it in a magazine, I would find sexy and something that I would also feel comfortable framing and hanging in my home.
What’s your favorite part of a woman?
Well, there are a couple of different things. I think that the sexiest part of a woman varies from woman to woman.
Why did I know that was going to be the answer?
I hate to be so diplomatic with my answers, but, you know, I don’t have a type.
That was the next question: Do you have a type?
I don’t. I think in this particular shoot I wanted to focus on Skin’s curves, especially in the small of her back and the back of her legs and those little divots that the light really shines nicely off. But if I had to pick a type, I’m not a leg, or ass, or breast man; I’m a face man. And I’m an eyes man. At the end of the day, that’s who I’m interacting with. That’s where the human is inside. And I’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of years with a lot of different beautiful women, and ultimately it comes down to what keeps me interested and intrigued and inspired. It’s what’s going on upstairs and behind the eyes. There are some eyes that are more intense than others, and there can be intense eyes that don’t have the light behind them, and what I look for is that light. But just on an aesthetic level, in terms of types, I like girls with funny-colored hair and tattoos, and I like blonde bombshells, and I like Asian women, and — you know, it depends on the woman. They’re all my type.
We have several updates featuring the thoughts of Dave Navarro online here, including a fascinating Legacy Reprint from the January, 2011, issue of Penthouse Magazine. Dave even did a stint as a columnist, so in many ways beginning something new with an old friend makes perfect sense for us.
We pulled this original Pop Shots Dave Navarro episode out of the server archives simply because it was the very first printed “episode” back in 2014. The discussion of “filmmaking” brought to mind that while some of the artists over the years did shoot video along with the frozen microseconds of time in the photographs, as near as we can tell, Dave did not. We should at least pop in an Instagram link for him — which we have now done — and we should most definitely give you a way to get to Holly Randall, the über-talented photographer on this shoot. You can find Holly lots of places, but if you want to really get to know something about her, you should look into one of her workshops.
Knockout Avril Mathie shows as a triple threat with beauty, brains and brawn — the Aussie athlete perhaps best known to sports fans as an undefeated boxing pro, who appreciates the art of the sweet science. But Avril’s also a self-admitted travel addict, gorgeous model, and fitness expert who loves connecting with people and inspiring them to live their best lives. Penthouse spoke with Avril, 35, about how she made the leap from bikini contests to boxing and what keeps her coming back to the ring.
How did you get your start modeling?
I’m originally from Australia. From 18 to 21, I worked in a nightclub on the Gold Coast. Every week, they would hold bikini competitions with really big cash prizes — and not just for the winner, but for whoever made it to the finals. So, sometimes if there were not enough girls entering, they would ask us from behind the bar if we wanted to jump in. I always would, and I started winning a lot of money this way! A few years in, I also made a lifestyle change from partying a lot to being healthy and working out, and that was when I started winning everything and going to higher levels of the competitions — winning national finals, and even international finals like Miss Swimsuit USA 2013 and the $50,000 Las Vegas International Model Search in 2015.
Along this whole journey I was gaining notoriety, and brands would often approach me to model for them. Then Instagram was born, and it was even easier for brands to connect with me.
What attracted you to boxing?
I started boxing late in 2012. I broke my foot doing muay thai, which I had been doing for a few years just for fun and fitness, and boxing was literally all I could do. With a broken foot, I couldn’t run, jump or anything! The coach I had at the time started to teach me a lot more defensive work — rather than just attacking — and I started to see it as a game of chess. But games are more fun when there are two players, so I wanted to have a fight! I somehow won my first bout and was addicted to the adrenaline. It became my obsession and was all I wanted to do.
What’s your typical fitness routine?
If I don’t have an upcoming fight, I’m training boxing three to four times per week. I’ll do strength and conditioning sessions one to two times per week, a long run or two, and play beach volleyball almost every day. If I have a fight coming up, I’ll drop the beach volley to one to two days per week, do boxing five times per week, and add sprint and speedwork sessions as well.
What was behind your move from Australia to Florida? And what do you like most about your new home base?
In 2015, I split from my ex and had a realization that I can be anywhere I want in the world, doing whatever I wanted to do. After a little thought, I decided that was boxing and that the land of opportunity was the USA. I almost moved to Las Vegas or L.A., but after spending a week in Miami I decided as a beach girl that was more of an ideal spot for me! And I’m glad I did, because I have an amazing coach and team here. It’s easy to travel anywhere from here — the airport is 15 to 20 minutes away — and I live one block from the beach. It doesn’t get better than that!
What are your current short-term and long-term goals?
My short-term goals are usually whatever I have coming up, a fight, a project that I’m working on, staying fit, etc. But I’m so satisfied just living out my life and enjoying the spontaneity of whatever comes my way that I don’t really get too attached to any one thing. What I enjoy most of all is connecting with people, making them laugh and inspiring them with how I live my life and the possibilities of how they could live theirs and what they can achieve. Randomly, my long-term goals are to own a lot of property and build really cool houses.
Do you have any interest in pursuing an MMA career?
No, I have no interest in getting elbowed in the face!
With everything else you have going on, what’s made you keep coming back to boxing?
Boxing excites me because I like to challenge myself. But honestly there are periods I go through where I get a bit bored with it because I don’t feel like I’m growing or improving. Boxing is very political, so it can often get frustrating when you just want to compete. But then sometimes you just have that one training session or fight offer — or maybe even just a conversation with someone — that reignites the flame. So right now I’m still here. I’m also really enjoying beach volleyball at the moment, too, and I can compete every single week if I want to, so I think that’s really helped my competitive patience.
Tell us about your workout app. How did that come about, and what do you like most about it?
I noticed there were no good boxing apps out there that actually teach you how to box and the proper movements. They just give you random “boxing” fitness moves. I always have people asking me if I can coach them. I would absolutely love to, but I don’t have the time. So I created my app — boxwithavrilapp.com — to fill the gap and teach people how to use their whole body when boxing. Not only do you look better doing it, but it’s a way more effective workout because you’re actually using your whole body. It’s also one of the hardest workouts out there, so once you learn the basics, you can rip into shape really fast. There’s also a chat feature in there, so my members can update me on how they’re doing — which I love to hear — ask any questions or advice, or request specific workouts.
As befits a modern personal brand proponent, you may find Ms. Avril Mathie on Instagram, Twitter, or even via her own website — a trick not many of the mobile-first crowd has understood much as of yet. (On social media, “they” own your content. On your own site, you get to be the owner yourself. This, however, should be a discussion for a different day.) All of that officialness aside, if you really want to get in deep with Avril, we suggest her YouTube channel. Of course you can watch her box, but he vlog will be worth your time all by itself.
There was the fusty, vaguely locker room-smelling name — non-fungible tokens — but also the wild concept that investors (i.e. you and I) would pay for data stored on a blockchain.
Even funnier was the idea that the cryptographically ensnared whatsit would represent “ownership” of anything, from a digital avatar with a beanie to a clock that displays how many days Julian Assange has been in prison. But given the clock sold in February for $52 million and the beanie-wearing CryptoPunk #7523 for nearly $12 million, nobody’s laughing now, except the creators — who must be in stitches.
Musicians and their record labels have been quick to get their pickaxes and sieves into the ground for this latest gold rush, spurred on — as with all gold rushes — by the sight of fellow prospectors brandishing nuggets the size of their heads. Canadian musician Grimes sold almost $6 million worth of digital art and original music during a 20-minute auction last year. American DJ 3LAU sold the world’s first “tokenized” album, alongside a further 33 “unique items,” for more than $11 million.
Because they’re still new, NFTs currently come with perks that will look quaint in hindsight. Kings of Leon released their latest album, When You See Yourself, as an NFT last year, with the added sweetener of four front-row seats and a “VIP experience” at any of their concerts for the rest of the token holder’s life. And all that for a relatively modest — or nosebleed-inducing — outlay of cash (meaning cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Polkadot — not your cracked old Mastercard, you hippie).
Streaming services pay between $0.00348 and $0.00675 per song play, so it’s easy to understand why artists see potential fun in the non-fungible. Music-focused NFT platforms, such as Binance and Centaurify, have begun sprouting like, um, fungi. And in February, Snoop Dogg bought iconic hip-hop label Death Row Records and pulled its catalog from streaming services with a view to making the company a non-fungible endeavor.
Cynics abound, but supporters of NFTs say they’re a way for musicians, who traditionally get a 12 percent cut of the profits from their record companies, to wrestle back control of their art — a bit like Radiohead self-releasing In Rainbows in 2007, or Beyoncé exclusively releasing her 2016 album Lemonade on Tidal, the streaming service she co-owned with husband Jay-Z.
NFTs build scarcity into the digital model in a way that happens already with, say, rare vinyls. To be clear, you can still stream or buy the latest album by most big acts whether or not it’s released as an NFT. But the NFT version is an uncopiable — and essentially signed — file that’s been verified as an original and limited edition, to be kept or sold like any other artwork in the future. If the NFT includes an alternate, remixed or wholly original version of a song or album, that’s all the better.
Will you be high-fiving yourself in years to come for investing in NFTs or kicking yourself the way you did after you rushed out to buy a MiniDisc player (may they rest in peace) circa 2004?
We should probably note that we have published decidedly more pro NFT analysis in these digital pages. We could have more relevant insight, however.
The market changes all the time, as you might imagine, but taking one example within this “pay for digital stuff with fake money” world, we looked at Ethereum. According to Yahoo tracking, from a high at the end of 2021 of just over $4,600 as of this month the “value” had dropped to $1,300 and change. Over this same past year, bitcon had fallen from over $61K a year ago to under $20K today. Of course that means you’d be paying many fewer actual “can buy milk and bread with them” dollars for NFTs now. So … yay?
Penthouse spoke to the artist about how she developed her unique style, why retro porn gets her creative juices flowing, and the decision that saw her ditch academia for a full-time career in art.
Tell us a bit about you.
I’m a sensitive, introverted night owl, and maybe a bit of a hedonist—and I think it shows in my work. I love to consume and create art that feeds the senses. I’m happy with a piece when it’s both visually striking and represents some duality like pain versus pleasure, beauty versus ugliness, safety versus danger.
How did you find your way to a career in art?
I’ve always made art, but it didn’t occur to me to make it a career until recently. I studied psychology in college, but as graduation neared, I kept ditching my research group. I also slept through the GRE that would determine if I could enter grad school. I think I’d had enough of academia. I didn’t understand what it could offer me.
After that, I was aimless for a while. I worked day jobs and wrote a style blog in my free time. No one read it, but I loved piecing each post together—dressing up, taking photos and crafting a story around each look.
In 2018, I moved to Dallas to be near friends. Their style inspired me to resurrect the blog, this time as an online secondhand clothing store. I needed branding to make it official, so I drew it myself. My boyfriend at the time noticed and gifted me a tablet. That’s when I started exploring the style I use today. People took more notice of my artwork than my clothing, so I ran with it.
The short answer is that I’m unhappy unless I’m my own boss. I don’t consider myself that brave or ambitious. It’s more that the pains of working a nine-to-five outweighs the pains of freelancing.
How did you develop your style?
I imitated my favorite airbrush artists of the ’70s and ’80s. When I don’t have a starting point, I often find luck in picking up where someone else left off.
We should mention that we slightly cropped a couple of those images in order to fit the gallery layout, but we did want to make them large enough for you to appreciate the vintage erotica detail. Amazing.
What inspires your art?
The golden age of advertising, sex, taboo, glamour, disco and decadence.
What is it about vintage erotica that gets your creative juices flowing?
I’m trying to figure that out, and this is what I’ve come up with: Erotica is inherent to every generation. We humans have been horny since we’ve existed. The spirit and trends of a specific generation, however, belong only to that generation. So, seeing a universal concept like erotica through a narrow lens—like the ’80s zeitgeist—shows the commonplace in a new light. You could do that with any subject, but sex is fun to play with. It’s universal, but people have a weird relationship with it, so it’s that much more compelling.
What drives you to create the type of art you do?
It’s fun! It’s sexy and surreal and weird. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but at the same time it requires great precision. It’s what I want to be: silly and serious.
How has your art evolved over time?
I suppose it’s gotten better. The more I create, the more I learn what works for me and what I shouldn’t even attempt to draw. I’d love for my technique to evolve, but the subject matter, on the other hand, is something that could stay constant and I’d be totally happy. Like other subjects, the world of erotica is so wide that I think I could explore it forever. Even if I only did illustrations of one human body for the rest of my life, there would always be some new way of representing it.
Tell us about some of your art achievements or highlights?
I don’t have any awards, so my achievements are more personal in nature. It’s an achievement anytime I land a job with a client who has values and tastes that are similar to mine. I’m so lucky to work with them. They often bring concepts to me I could never have dreamed of myself, and it’s always an honor to help them bring them to life.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to pursue art?
If you’re pursuing art to make money and have any talent at all, keep working on your craft, but at this point networking is a priority. It’s an icky word, but less so if you think about it as going out for drinks and meeting new people.
Ignore Insta-therapy and DO compare yourself to others. You need to know what sets you apart from others and in what ways you’re similar. It’s how you’ll assess your strengths and weaknesses. It’s not about how you stack up quantitatively as much as “What are successful artists doing?” and “What are the practices of artists who aren’t getting a lot of work?” And “Where do I fit in?”
Michelle Spearman works as a freelance illustrator in Dallas, Texas, You can find her easily on Instagram and on her own site, MichelleSpearmanArt. Feel free to buy something. What better way might there be to start up interesting conversations than having a golden switchblade with a couple of ladybugs on it hanging on your living room wall?
Height: 5’8″ Hometown: Perm, Russia Measurements: 34B-24-39 Fun Fact: Wants to be an Astronaut
Ravishing Russian camgirl Anlina Blu has charmed fans all across the globe. With her sensual moves and enchanting blue eyes, the willowy blonde is a natural entertainer, who loves to dance and connect with interesting people.
The naughty 20-something tells Penthouse she lives daringly even when she’s not in front of the camera, having had sex in a movie theater and gone bungee jumping. But Anlina is also a down-to-earth girl, who loves hanging out with friends and can’t wait to get behind the wheel of her very own convertible!
What is your favorite thing about your hometown?
I am just in love with my hometown, St. Petersburg. I like its historic architecture and the city’s kind, friendly people.
If you could have any job in the world, what would it be and why?
I’d like to be a pilot because I love to travel. But if I could have a fantasy job, it would be cool to be a superhero. It’s exciting and you get to help people. That’s the best of both worlds!
Describe your ideal man.
My dream guy is wise, funny and knows exactly what he wants. I’m drawn to men with self-confidence and strong personalities.
Aside from modeling and performing, what other career goals do you have?
I’m studying to be a speech therapist, which also means I know how to skillfully use my tongue!
Do you have a hidden talent that might surprise people?
I’m very flexible.
Let’s be honest most guys would tell you they know exactly what they want, although many appear to have given exactly zero thought to (A) how they should go about achieving that, or (B) whether or not that represents a reasonable goal or even if they deserve it. Of course that likely violates the Anlina Blu “wise” standard, but we think it quite funny, for what that’s worth. Now we can get to the more fun “left out of the magazine because they have limited pages” part.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I love to read, watch movies, and dance.
Favorite TV Show?
The Big Bang Theory
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
I would live everywhere! Here, there, and in their hearts…
Do you have a nickname?
No, but you can call me anything you want.
What is the most exciting place you’ve ever had sex?
I don’t like discussing sexual things, as I believe in love and not onetime or random sex.
See? You don’t hear that from nude models every day. … Magazine editors make odd choices sometimes. Wise, perhaps, but (again) certainly funny. Somewhat unusually these days, Anlina has no social media accounts under this name, instead choosing to focus her energies entirely on her Flirt4Free venture. Given the 72 and counting awards she has won there, that decision seems prescient. We love wise too.
An American hacker has taken down North Korea’s internet, grinding emails and government websites to a halt — all while in his pajamas.
The hacker, who goes by the alias P4x, launched repeated “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attacks as revenge for an unsuccessful cyberattack allegedly taken out against him by the nation’s government from the city of Pyongyang.
While it was initially assumed the sustained and disabling attack was the work of intelligence agencies in response to recent missile tests carried out by the communist state, sources said a regular Joe is responsible for the crippling cyberassault. Wired magazine described the anonymous hacker as “one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks, periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.”
P4x told the publication North Korea’s out of date operating systems meant he could easily launch his attack from the comfort of his own home. He said, “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming. I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.”
So now that you have some sense of our direction today, consider …
When Brownies Go Postal
Britain’s Royal Mail launched an investigation after a bunch of wasted postmen were seen staggering around the streets after “accidentally” consuming brownies laced with cannabis. A colleague posted a video of some of the extremely disoriented mail carriers on social media with a caption that read: “Today almost all the posties in Clapham accidentally ate hash brownies, and I had to pick them up one by one because they were so high.
“One guy said he was walking to a door and thought he was walking forever. Say a prayer for him right now. Hopefully, he is asleep or he is singing with unicorns.”
In the now deleted video, which was shared via Instagram Stories, one of the carriers in question can be heard saying he ate four of the hash brownies by mistake, while another said, “I think it’s weed.”
Apparently, the potent brownies were sent to a vacated property and didn’t include a return address, and after a month of sitting in the sorting office, the staff decided to help themselves to the seemingly harmless treats.
While the postmen giggled their way through the ordeal, as shown in the video, Royal Mail didn’t see the funny side and is considering disciplinary action.
Seriously, who eats random food they just find somewhere (well, presuming they have another choice to avoid starving)? More importantly, who wastes good hash by putting it in brownies you do not even eat yourself? That’s just crazy.
Unique Perspectives on Other Edibles
Raw-Dogging
Raw diets have been trending for a few years now, but one man has taken it to the next level: only eating raw meat to see how long he can survive.
On his Instagram account @rawmeatexperiment, the unnamed man posts daily videos of himself in public scoffing various uncooked animal parts—including massive ribeye steaks, chicken breasts, organs and fish filets—and washing them down with jugs of raw eggs or milk. He said the goal of the experiment is to eat raw meat every day until he dies from bacteria. The format of each video is the same. He sits in public, consuming a large portion of raw meat he’s just purchased at his local supermarket or butcher.
He wrote on one post, “Another Saturday, another raw cow heart to eat in public. Tbh it might be the raw meal I look forward to most. The taste is pleasant, and the texture is wonderful. I don’t eat much of the white fat tho. Camel milk is also brilliant. It tastes like you spilled regular milk in the desert and tried to lick it back up off the sand.”
According to his account, the man was a vegan for more than a decade. But after experiencing some health problems, a friend suggested he eat meat as a way to combat the issues. As he shifted to a raw meat diet, he said his health issues began to clear up, so he decided to make a public experiment out of his journey.
He wrote: “I support animal nutrition, but I’m not telling anyone you have to raw dog life to be healthy.”
At day 97, he’s still alive and kicking—unlike his meals.
Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee
You’ve probably heard that red wine, in moderation, is believed to have certain health benefits. But a new study has shown a couple of glasses of vino might supercharge your immune system to the point that it wards off coronavirus.
Researchers from China’s Shenzhen Kangning Hospital found people who drank white wine, red wine and champagne on a regular basis were less likely to catch COVID-19 than their non-drinking peers.
The researchers reported: “Our study suggests that subjects who usually consumed red wine and white wine and champagne above guidelines, and sometimes consumed one to two glasses per week [of fortified wine] within the guidelines, appear to have chances to reduce the risk of COVID-19.”
While white wine drinkers, who consumed up to five glasses a week, faced a 7 to 8 percent less chance of catching coronavirus, the study showed that one to two glasses of red wine a day actually lowered the risk of catching COVID-19 by 10 to 17 percent compared to non-drinkers. It wasn’t such good news for beer and cider drinkers, though, with the research showing that drinking those types of booze seemed to increase the risk of catching COVID-19.
“Consumption of beer and cider increased the COVID-19 risk, regardless of the frequency and amount of alcohol intake,” the researchers said. “Furthermore, heavy drinking is not recommended for all alcoholic beverages.”
Spuds Spo-Dee-O-Dee
We all find the aroma of a bucket of hot french fries irresistible, but would you want to smell like them?
The Idaho Potato Commission released a limited-edition fragrance dubbed Frites by Idaho, which is made from distilled potatoes and essential oils — and apparently smells exactly like greasy, salty french fries.
Jamey Higham, president and CEO of the organization, said, “Whether you’re at a drive-through restaurant or dining in, it’s near impossible to not grab a fry and take a bite before you dive in to your meal. The smell is too good to resist.”
Clearly, because the 1.7-ounce bottles, which retailed for $1.89 apiece—approximately the same price as an order of fast food fries—sold out within hours to fans who couldn’t wait to get their hands on a bottle of stinky tater juice. One review of the now sold-out fragrance marveled, “Close your eyes … take a wiff … potato farm take me away … incredible.”
Approaching this in reverse order here, we have but minimal commentary on these unique perspectives. First, why would you want to just smell french fires when for the same price you could eat them? Second, it could be that the relatively higher consumption of beer and harder alcohol has more to do with potentially virus-spreading activities than the type of booze ingested. Finally, we just have one word in response to that only eat raw food theory. ICK-ICK-ICK!
Hanging by a Thread
It’s all fun and games until you end up with a six-foot nylon string stuck inside your penis during a sex game gone very wrong.
A 37-year-old virgin from Indonesia found himself hanging by a literal thread after masturbating with a length of stiff string, which unfortunately ended up getting stuck in his bladder.
The unnamed man headed to a local hospital after experiencing hours of abdominal pain and an inability to urinate.
After a failed first attempt at removing the foreign material, the man was put under anesthesia and doctors were able to remove “a black bundle of string” with a pair of forceps from the depths of the man’s bladder.
He spent two days in the hospital and made a full recovery.
Yet another example why no strings attached is the best approach.
It may seem a tad judgemental to label the unique perspective on self-love demonstrated here as clearly the act of a virgin, but we can say for certain that the fellow clearly had a quite positive response to a nurse inserting a catheter at some point in his past.
Storm in a D Cup
People who live in the U.K. are used to weird and unpredictable weather, but Mother Nature put on an X-rated show for Glasgow residents following Storm Dudley, when clouds resembling giant breasts filled the sky above the Scottish city.
After the storm passed, Brian Morrison posted a video to his Twitter account which showed a bountiful sky full of bulbous boobs.
Twitter went into a frenzy over the chesty clouds, while other users were quick to explain the strange shapes as extraterrestrial.
It turns out the clouds are technically mammatus clouds, which are made primarily of ice and are created by turbulence and cold air sinking below the cloud. The process creates puffy protrusions on underbelly of storm clouds.
Utmost respect intended here, anyone that sees boobs in those clouds may need to get out of the country for a bit and head to a city with a local strip club. Our interpretation clearly helps with their opinion, but full disclosure, we added this month’s Pet Linsey Donovan to the landscape. Maybe they were just imagining her — a few months in advance. Who knows?
At this point we should probably just close this now surprisingly long discourse, but that would hardly be like us, so we’ll add just one more point. We noticed early on here about the cocktail party vs. beer bash debate, but it brought to mind a question. Can one still find a good coffee klatch if one desires? Second question: has anyone ever attended an actual “cocktail party” that was defined as such? … We found a relatively recent article on potential themes with unique perspectives — which matches our theme today, helpfully enough — but they still sound rather snooty. We say fire up the portable grill in your friend’s driveway and have a tailgate soirée for no particular reason whatsoever. (You use your friend’s driveway because who wants to clean up after that mess?)
As has been (or, y’know, at least will be) the custom, we begin with a rough translation of the article that appeared in the Penthouse Mexico magazine. Come to find out, other countries tend to publish in their own languages. Go figure. … Therefore…
We officially launch Penthouse Mexico with a successful and empowered woman, who at every stage of her career has refused to stay in her comfort zone. Yanet Garcia tells us about her dreams, efforts, and her next steps.
It begins with Yanet Garcia revolutionizing the weather forecasting business by having fun before and after the numbers part of the segments, which used to be — let’s be honest — boring. Hailing from Monterrey and belonging now to a group of pioneers that make us all look forward to her segments before we must leave for work.
We cannot say for certain that the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden grew Granny Smith apples, but should that have been the case, we can definitely see the problem.
Yanet began her participation in Televisa Monterrey’s weekend news, and in just a few broadcasts became the center of attention because of her great charisma and spectacular beauty in front of the camera. Yanet tells us how her collaboration began: “I had several contacts to create my own modeling agency and help other girls fulfill their dreams. This is how Yanet Garcia Models was born. So I modeled for Televisa and something stirred in me saying, ‘I don’t want to model anymore, I want the girls from my academy to do it.’”
And so it began. Yanet took her girls to work at the television station, not knowing that an opportunity was being forged for her. “One day Mauro Morales (weather expert and presenter on Televisa Monterrey) called me saying, ‘Wouldn’t you like to be a weather presenter? Think about it!’”
Think about it she did. After giving herself a space to consider and talk with her family, Yanet made the decision to accept the challenge and participate in the casting. The test would not be easy because there were many other interesting people looking for the opportunity. Nonetheless, they selected Yanet.
“I was impressed,” she confesses to us. “Mauro trained me to be the girl who presented the weather, I learned quickly but not everything was beautiful, sometimes I felt I was doing it awful, but always with every intention of improving it.”
An even bigger door would open for Yanet in this learning process, though.
“I asked a friend to record me while giving the weather, so that I might learn from my mistakes. Well, he uploaded some videos to YouTube and just one of those went viral and that changed my life, … I became famous on social networks and many more doors opened for me in many places across Mexico and in the United States. Doing weather reports on Despierta América allowed me to reach the ears of Magda Rodríguez who encouraged me to join the Hoy program.
Although Yanet had achieved great fame on the small screen, some of her success led her to try her luck in the cinema with participation in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming and Bellezonismo. Even though Yanet decided to resume her participation as a weather host on Hoy, she forged a determining goal for herself: “I told Magda that I would go with her to Televisa for two years, but that after that I wanted to follow my dream of being an actress.”
Yanet Garcia became “The weather girl” par excellence over this period, always awaiting new stories that would be coming into her life after ending her run. True to her plan, Yanet did not in fact renew with Hoy for a third year, choosing instead to go to the United States to study acting and perfect her English. “I met my ex-boyfriend, who lives in the United States, and I went with him. Then the issue of the pandemic happened and some plans fell apart due to the closure of everything. Faced with the situation, I dedicated myself to social networks and the contracts I already had, but my mom called me to tell me to help her lose weight, I told her to go see a nutritionist, but I agreed to help her with my knowledge; not with a diet, but with healthy things like eating fruits, vegetables, and above all, staying away from junk food.”
To Yanet’s surprise, her mother managed to lose 15 kilos thanks to Yanet’s advice. “Ella Le changed her life, this was something very exciting for me, which caused her to start studying nutrition.” Now, Yanet also an official certification as a Health Coach by the IIN.
Yanet likewise began to work on content for OnlyFans, which turned all of Mexico upside down. “Many people recommended that platform to me, and I investigated carefully. I convened a work team and they explained the platform to me fully. Many people say that I ended my relationship because of this platform, which is totally false. This platform is not just about nudity. There are people who recommend things, diets, coaching, etc. as well. And I am also using my Instagram to give advice on life and exercise. I am proud that I started to monetize my work while being able to manage my entire work team.”
Soon, Yanet will be launching a line of food supplements, and she definitely plans on resuming acting.
“I’m going to the Dominican Republic to record a series of which there will be more details soon.”
As to her current state of mind, Yanet confesses, “I feel at peace because I have left my comfort zone. The more afraid you are, the better for you to do it. That is the advice I always give. Go ahead and dare to do things! There are many people who could be successful but fear holds them back. On one occasion in CDMX they invited me to act in theater. Sure, it scared me, but once you do it and experience it, you say: ‘Wow! How well I think I did it.’ … Another proof of action conquering fear comes from living in New York. This has always been my dream, and that’s why I’m here.”
Full disclosure we do not have a highly-specialized fancy interpreter roaming around the offices at Penthouse. Consequently, we have provided the English in a time-honored, “Well, we’re pretty sure that’s mostly what it says. Probably.” kind of way. Should any of you out there speak Spanish better than anyone here, feel free to correct us. We won’t mind, Fair warning, though. You might be put to work. … Now for the actual article. …
Yanet García: Relato de un sueño a la vez
Hacemos el lanzamiento oficial de Penthouse México con una mujer exitosa y empoderada, quien en cada etapa de su trayectoria se ha negado a quedarse en su zona de confort. Yanet García (iamyanetgarcia) nos platica sobre sus sueños, esfuerzos y próximos pasos.
Es verdad que hay un antes y después en los pronósticos del clima, esa sección de noticieros o programas de revista que solía ser, seamos honestos, aburrida. Está la época en que te informabas y están los nuevos tiempos, en donde además te entretienes, la pasas bien. A esta nueva ola pertenece Yanet García, la regiomontana y una de las pioneras en hacer del clima un momento esperado mientras se toma café antes de salir de casa.
Yanet comenzó su participación en Las noticias del fin de semana de Televisa Monterrey, y fue en tan solo algunas emisiones que ella se convirtió en el centro de atención, la razón: gran carisma y espectacular belleza frente a cámara. Al respecto, ella nos platica cómo inició su colaboración: “Tenía varios contactos para crear mi propia agencia de modelaje y ayudar a otras niñas a cumplir su sueño. Fue así como nació Yanet García Models. Entonces yo modelaba para Televisa y nació algo en mí que me dijo: ‘ya no quiero modelar, quiero que las chavas de mi academia lo hagan’”. Y así fue, Yanet tomó la batuta para llevar a sus chicas a trabajar a la televisora, sin saber que una oportunidad se estaba forjando para ella. “Un día Mauro Morales (experto y presentador del clima en Televisa Monterrey) me llamó para decirme: ‘¿no te gustaría ser presentadora del clima? ¡Piénsalo!’”.
Así lo hizo, luego de darse un espacio para considerarlo y platicar con su familia, tomó la decisión de aceptar el reto y participar en el casting, en donde la prueba no sería fácil pues había otros perfiles interesantes buscando la oportunidad. No obstante, fue seleccionada. “Me quedé impresionada”, nos confiesa. “Mauro me capacitó para poder ser la chica que presentaba el clima, aprendí rápido pero no todo fue bello, algunas veces sentía que lo hacía fatal, pero siempre con toda la intención de mejorarlo”.
Fue en ese proceso de aprendizaje que una nueva puerta se abriría para ella: “hablando con un amigo, le pedí que me grabara mientras daba el clima, esto lo hacía para aprender de mis errores, y subió algunos videos a YouTube y justo uno de esos se hizo viral y eso cambió mi vida, en redes sociales me hice famosa y me abrió las puertas de muchos lugares en México y Estados Unidos, por ejemplo en Despierta América de Univision dando el clima” y luego llegó a oídos de Magda Rodríguez para unirse al programa Hoy.
Sin embargo, aunque Yanet estaba logrado gran fama en la pantalla chica, algunas inquietudes la llevaron a probar suerte en el cine con participaciones en Sharknado 5: Global Swarming y Bellezonismo. Y si bien decidió retomar su participación como conductora del clima en Hoy, ella se forjó un objetivo determinante: “Le dije a Magda que me iría con ella a Televisa por dos años, pero que después de eso quería seguir mi sueño de ser actriz”. El resto se cuenta solo: Yanet García se convirtió en “La chica del clima” por excelencia en ese periodo, y nuevas historias están llegando a su vida luego de dar por concluida su participación.
Para el tercer año, decidió ya no renovar con Hoy y optó por irse a Estados Unidos para estudiar actuación y perfeccionar su inglés. “Conocí a mi exnovio, quien vive en Estados Unidos, y me fui con él. Después sucedió el tema de la pandemia y algunos planes se vinieron abajo por el cierre de todo. Ante la situación, me dediqué a las redes sociales y a los contratos que ya tenía, pero mi mamá me habló para decirme que le ayudara a bajar de peso, le dije que fuera con una nutrióloga, pero acepté ayudarle con mis conocimientos; no con dieta, pero con cosas saludables como alimentarse con frutas, verduras, y sobre todo alejarla de la comida chatarra”. Para sorpresa, su madre logró perder 15 kilos gracias a los consejos de Yanet. “Le cambió su vida, esto fue algo muy emocionante para mí, lo cual provocó que empezara a estudiar nutrición”. Ahora, Yanet también es una mujer que está certificada como Health Coach por el IIN.
Asimismo, una de las actividades que ha dado de qué hablar de manera reciente es que Yanet empezó a trabajar contenidos para OnlyFans, lo que a todo México puso de cabeza. “Mucha gente me recomendó esa plataforma e investigué y después convoqué a un equipo de trabajo y me explicaron sobre ese tema. Mucha gente dice que yo terminé mi relación por esta plataforma, lo cual es totalmente falso. Esta plataforma no es solo de desnudos, hay gente que recomienda cosas, dietas, coaching, etcétera. Y mi Instagram lo estoy ocupando para dar consejos de vida y ejercicio, empecé a monetizar mi trabajo para poder gestionar todo mi equipo de trabajo”.
También, en puerta está lanzar una línea de suplementos alimenticios y retomar la actuación, para muestra: “me iré a República Dominicana a grabar una serie de la que próximamente habrá más detalles”. Y sobre el momento actual que vive Yanet, ella nos confiesa: “Me siento en paz porque he salido de mi zona de confort, entre más miedo tengas, es mejor hacerlo. Ese es el consejo que siempre doy: aventarse y atreverse a hacer las cosas, hay mucha gente que es exitosa pero el miedo los retiene. En una ocasión en CDMX me invitaron a actuar en teatro, a mí me daba miedo, pero una vez que lo haces y lo vives, dices: “¡wow!, qué bueno que lo hice”. Y muestra de este miedo es vivir en Nueva York, este siempre ha sido mi sueño y por eso estoy aquí”.
Naturally, we would encourage you to subscribe to Penthouse México via their digital offering as well. Just think of all the free translations you could send us.
There are many professions that have been traditionally seen as male-dominated: car mechanic, military strongman, James Bond, etc. But the job of bushranger may be the most stereotypically masculine of all. When we think of bushrangers, we tend to think of rough men with big beards and funny hats.
While women were definitely in the minority, they weren’t entirely absent in the history of bushranging.
In fact, one of the most famous of all bushrangers owed a good deal of his success to his right-hand woman.
Mary Ann Bugg was born in Gloucester, New South Wales, in 1834, the daughter of an Aboriginal woman and an English convict. A precocious girl, she was married at 14 because these were historical times and people were OK with all sorts of horrible stuff. She had one child with her first husband before ditching him and hightailing it with another man to Bathurst. After having another two kids with her new fellow, leaving him for another man, and having another three kids with him, a somewhat exhausted Mary Ann chanced to meet one Frederick Ward, a ticket-of-leave convict with some big dreams.
She was married at 14 because these were historical times and people were OK with all sorts of horrible stuff.
By this time Mary Ann was 26 years old, had borne six children and was looking for a change. For a lively young woman with a taste for bad boys, Fred Ward was paydirt.
This was because Ward would, within a few years of hooking up with Mary Ann, become the legendary Captain Thunderbolt, one of Australia’s most feared and admired bushrangers. Thunderbolt and his gang cut a swathe through the north and west of NSW for a good seven years, but he wouldn’t have been nearly as successful at his chosen profession if it hadn’t been for Mary Ann who, in an early example of how women truly can have it all, combined her duties of wife and mother to a constantly increasing brood of little Thunderbolts with her new career as a bandit.
Crafty Mary Ann became the Thunderbolt gang’s reconnaissance expert, keeping her man Ward safe by keeping her eyes and ears open and providing advance warning of any danger.
Before Thunderbolt would ride into a town, whether to pull off a job or just to rest up and drink their savings, Mary Ann would go ahead as scout. Townsfolk would see the young woman ride in on her own, dressed like a dashing stockman in moleskin pants, Wellington boots, monkey jacket, cabbage tree hat, and various other items of clothing with bizarre names that people liked to put on in the 1860s. She would check out the town, determine whether there were any troopers about, and report back to her captain.
Mary Ann also took care of the gang’s camps, making sure the men were well-fed and annoying them by cleaning bits of dirt off their faces with a hankie in front of their friends.
On occasion she ran into trouble with the law, but each time managed to extricate herself through cunning and a little bit of luck. Once she was arrested for vagrancy, but was released after questions were asked in Parliament as to what on earth the police were doing arresting a woman, well-known as the non-vagrant gender.
The combination of Captain Thunderbolt’s brilliant horsemanship and ruthless criminal ambition with Mary Ann’s sharp eyes and quick wit made the couple an unstoppable bushranging team. It can be no coincidence that Thunderbolt, with Mary Ann by his side, proved to have a much longer bushranging career than any other of his ilk — most bushrangers either met their end or got out of the business after a year or two.
Neither can it be a coincidence that after their relationship finally ended — probably because of the captain’s roving eye — Ward got himself run down and killed in 1870. Without Mary Ann, he wasn’t half the bushranger he had been with her.
Mary Ann outlived Thunderbolt by more than three decades. After his death, she returned to one of the men she had lived with pre-bushranging, having another four children to add to the three she had with Thunderbolt and the six she had before Thunderbolt, making a grand total of far too many.
Mary Ann was 70 years old when she died in 1905 in Mudgee, NSW. Less than 10 of those years had been spent with Frederick Ward — but to her dying day, she would always be, in her own words, “the Captain’s Lady.”
Given our woefully ignorant of world history because of American public education status, we had to look up bushranger history. Honestly the title sounds like a series title some lesbian company like Girlfriends Films might come up with, but come to find out, it’s a real thing. These days you can even find place dedicated to helping you do your own research, because apparently a fascination with outlaws spans oceans too. We were going to do a deep dive and compare Australian outlaw history customs with American ones, but we decided to contact the owner of Girlfriends Films instead so that we might give him our most excellent idea for a new series. We left a message but have heard nothing back so far. … In the real world, a great many of our most excellent ideas get ignored, truth be told. … Go figure.
During my college years in Boston, I could reliably cure homesickness by visiting friends at the University of Vermont, where my state’s progressive politics and bohemian way of life were on full display. Suresh Garimella was well into my future.
I grew up a flower child, the son of artists in a bucolic small town in Vermont’s mystical Northeast Kingdom. Long-haired and in love with nature, I became a peacenik early on during elementary school, when I marshalled my fledgling indignance to inveigh against the government’s War on Terror.
The Green Mountain State has long spawned people like me, as has “Groovy UV,” our largest state school. During visits, I witnessed more than my fair share of drug rugs and kaleidoscopic room tapestries. But homebred students and outsiders alike also shared an affinity for Vermont’s core principles, like pacifism, environmental stewardship and the humanities.
UVM today produces more Peace Corps enlistees than nearly any other school. Some students go on to work as aides for Sen. Bernie Sanders or activists for Bill McKibben’s environmental group, 350.org. Some submerge themselves in Burlington’s idealistic political scene, where local leaders not only allocate funds to fill potholes but argue for divestment of the city’s economy from oil monopolies and the military industrial complex.
When I returned home in 2015 to work as an investigative journalist, I was eager to immerse myself in these values. I soon discovered, however, that Vermont’s crunchy core was being hollowed out, infused with a militaristic sludge, thanks largely to the state’s political leaders — in particular our soon-to-retire senior senator, Patrick Leahy.
In many ways, Leahy fits squarely in line with Vermont’s peacenik attitudes. As a freshman senator, in 1975 he pushed to end military funding for the Vietnam War. Nearly 30 years later, he cast a brave “No” vote on invading Iraq in 2002. One of his namesake programs, the Leahy War Victims Fund, has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to civilians injured by landmines from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Another, the Leahy law, bans American money from supporting abusive foreign militaries.
And yet from his powerful perch on the Senate Appropriations Committee, much of it as chairman or ranking member of the defense subcommittee, Leahy has stuffed my state, and yours, with billions in Pentagon pork, changing the American landscape in significant ways.
His sustained advocacy for Vermont’s defense industry — not to mention his Irish lineage — has earned him the nickname “Saint Patrick” in the state’s military circles. His major projects include an ICE nerve center operating in the hometown of ice-cream magnate Jerry Greenfield. He’s also funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Vermont National Guard and put his thumb on the scales to bring 20 F-35 fighter jets to the Guard’s air unit in Burlington. (The noisy jets have spurred sustained community opposition — including that of Greenfield’s business partner, Ben Cohen, who was arrested for disorderly conduct during a 2018 protest.)
Leahy has also blessed Norwich University and the Vermont Technical Institute with millions in military grants. UVM is now similarly pivoting to defense research as part of a drastic school reorientation. This new vision is supported by Leahy and his allies, including the school’s president, Suresh Garimella, a military scientist by trade who is boosting defense research while slashing 23 liberal arts programs. This new direction clashes violently with the ideals of John Dewey, a Burlington native, UVM alumnus and pioneering education philosopher who championed a learning model that “keeps itself as far as may be from everything industrial, utilitarian, professional.”
The cozy relationship between higher education and the military state was solidified, ironically enough, by a Vermont congressman named Justin Morrill. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln ratified Morrill’s legislation setting forth America’s land grant universities. In accepting federal funds, these schools agreed to provide mandatory military education. One was UVM, which today oversees the oldest Army ROTC program in the country.
Morrill hoped this requirement would create a decentralized network of citizen-soldiers and thereby discourage the creation of an entrenched military establishment. Instead, the military spent much of the next century consolidating power and influence in many corners of American society, including academia.
Much of this work was spearheaded during and after World War II. That’s when the War Department cultivated in professors what one advisor described as a “consciousness” around their “responsibility to the nation’s security.” The first piece of infrastructure to inculcate this mindset was the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Established in 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt, it tasked university scientists with developing all sorts of military technology, including the atom bomb.
In 1950, President Harry Truman established the National Science Foundation, a major grant-making apparatus that, from its inception, associated scientific excellence with military supremacy.
In 1961, former President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the growing influence of what he deemed the “military industrial complex.” Eisenhower, a five-star general and hero of World War II, had initially wanted to use the term “military industrial academic complex,” but scrapped the language to avoid degrading the positive reputation enjoyed by America’s system of higher education.
His concerns proved prescient. By 2002, almost 350 colleges and universities were conducting Pentagon-funded research. In recent years, no less than $10 billion has been allocated annually for military research. At the same time this money spigot has widened, state support for public education has severely declined.
Vermont has long stood out as one of the stingiest funders of public education. When Garimella arrived at UVM in 2019, he came with an alternative funding playbook he’d perfected as executive vice president for research and partnerships at Purdue University, where he’d secured hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts. A brilliant scientist in his own right, Garimella also conducted pathbreaking military research at Purdue around thermal cooling technology.
In his short time at UVM, research funding has hit an all-time high. As part of this work, Garimella forged a partnership with the U.S. Army and upgraded the school’s supercomputer, “Deep Green,” to enable cutting-edge defense research.
During Garimella’s installation ceremony, Leahy hailed his “ability to build ties between our students and Vermont’s economy.” Leahy’s remarks came during a year in which Vermont saw the second largest jump in aerospace and defense growth out of all 50 states, a trend for which the senior senator is largely responsible. During a September conference featuring major military contractors, UVM officials spoke on how their curriculum is creating “your future workforce.”
Months after Garimella snagged the job, UVM established a scholarship program honoring Leahy and his wife, Marcelle. Its major corporate funders included aerospace giant Boeing, which ponied up $1 million. Members of UVM’s board of trustees and associated fundraising foundation have financial ties to the defense industry, as does Garimella. In addition to his UVM salary, Garimella last year made $217,490 as Chair of the Technology Committee of Modine Manufacturing Company, which has secured lucrative contracts to develop thermal management systems for military vehicles.
More military grants seem inevitable for UVM, thanks to these bonds, as well as Garimella’s influential role on the board of the National Science Foundation. Yet a more peaceful curriculum is possible. The state’s leaders must simply give it a chance.
You may of course read the principles and goals of Suresh Garimella for yourself via the UVM official site. For our part, we’d love to do an interview if for no other reason than to ask one burning question: “So, can you describe what the transition was like for you between Ohio State and Berkley?” … He must have had a nervous twitch for weeks. (And now you know why no one ever asks anyone in our department to serve as an investigative journalist. Our business cards would have to say, “Asks Odd Questions and Writes Stuff.”
The Penthouse World According to Dave Navarro
